Execution not about pain, but retribution
The SC searches for a less painful method of execution than death by hanging and wishes to scrutinise if such deaths are proportional. The world has experimented with firing squads, gas chambers, electrocution, hanging and lethal injection. Each is a dreadful, uncivilised and inhuman method of ending life with legal sanction. In all these cases, the last living moments of a prisoner being led to the execution chamber are full of torment. Firing at the convicts leads to a painful and slow death by bleeding unless the heart or brain is punctured. In a gas chamber, the convicts try to hold their breath in vain and suffer an excruciating death. In electrocution, the convicts are conscious while the body burns. If hanging doesn’t lead to instant neck dislocation, the convicts die of painfully slow asphyxiation.
Crafted or engineered death is painful. Persons in death throes undergo trauma and pain beyond human endurance apart from the anxiety and anticipation of death. Imagine the plight if something goes wrong with the execution procedure and death is prolonged. But that is what death is all about when awarded as a punitive sentence—the anticipation of death and experiencing dying is the punishment.
Convicted persons are expected to realise how much pain they may have inflicted on their murder victims. That, philosophically, is meant to be their redemption, though, ironically, the convicts have no chance of reforming once they escape the pain. In that sense, the judiciary’s principle of reformation is denied them. If the bulwark of legal punishments is to bring erring people back on the right path, those who get the death sentence are exempt. In this case, a less painful death is merely a matter of detail.
Today, science has answers to a painless execution. Drugs can put convicts to sleep, paralyse their muscle systems and finally stop their hearts. In this case, the patients are not conscious, hence unaware of the pain. The argument is if convicts don’t feel the pain of death, what is the point of execution? As to the proportionality of a death sentence to a crime, it is subjective and not measurable. It is retributive, though. Alternative sentences like life without parole exist, but if the Indian judiciary can look for a humane execution, it is only a step away from questioning the death penalty.